Residents generating tons more trash
Dirty diapers and quarantine cleaning lead to curbside pickup increase of over 15% amid coronavirus crisis
Cooking and eating at home, changing the diapers of their babies who aren’t in day care and cleaning out attics and garages with downtime gusto, homebound Connecticut residents are generating tons more household garbage, recyclables and bulky waste during the coronavirus pandemic.
“Our trash can at the end of the week looks like we have a family of 12,” Carolyn Klei, a married mother of two from East Hartford, said Wednesday.
Trash haulers confirm they are seeing more overflowing bins on their residential routes.
At Enfield-based USA Hauling and Recycling, curbside collections were up about 15% in the past six weeks compared with the same period last year, company director of operations Eric Fredericksen said.
At the same time, however, commercial pickups were down about 30% as many restaurants, stores and office buildings remain shuttered, he said.
In West Hartford, trash volume has increased 16%.
“One of our theories is that because people are staying at home, their trash is no longer being dispersed to offices, colleges, schools, gyms, libraries, places of worship, etc.,” town recycling coordinator Katherine Breer Bruns said. “So all of their trash is ending up in the residential waste stream.”
Spring cleaning and increased mail ordering also are contributing to the rising piles of waste and recyclables, she said.
New Britain also collected about 16% more trash this March than in March of last year, an increase of 249 tons, Public Works Director Mark Moriarty reported.
“I think it’s just people at home with little more to do than home projects,” Moriarty said.
Mayor Erin Stewart added, “We’re getting a ton of calls for bulky trash, every day.”
Traffic is also way up at Trumbull’s transfer station.
“So much idle time and nervous energy has translated into clean homes and yards,” Public Works Director George Estrada said.
“Last spring we averaged 312 cars per day (at the transfer station) and this year it was 509 cars per day,” he said. “We have seen much higher traffic this year with the last two Saturdays alone at 748 and 837 cars in five-hour shifts.”
Household trash up, commercial waste declines
At the trash-to-energy plant in Hartford, the increase in household waste is evident by the number of trucks coming through that handle residential routes, as opposed to trucks that pick up dumpsters, said Tom Kirk, president of the Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority. There is some crossover, Kirk said, because apartment complexes typically have dumpsters.
Waste from commercial sources and overall volume at the facility, however, are down, Kirk said. Garbage typically increases with warmer weather and also during vibrant economies, he said.
“Historically, trash volumes have been a pretty good surrogate for economic activity,” Kirk said.
In Manchester, municipal solid waste rose by 184.5 tons this March compared with March 2019, Public Works Director Tim Bockus said. Bulky waste brought to the transfer station increased by 55.5 tons, and bulky and yard waste collected curbside was up by 27 tons in the same comparison, Bockus said.
In East Hartford, bulky waste collection for the third quarter of this fiscal year (January to March) compared with the same period in fiscal year 2018-19 increased from 278 to 394 tons, or about 40%, Mayor Marcia Leclerc said.
Plainville also is seeing a higher volume of trash compared with the last two years. Between July 1 and March 31, 4,386 tons were delivered to the Covanta plant in Bristol. The average over the last two years during the same period was 3,779 tons, a 16% increase, Town Manager Robert Lee said. Town officials have not researched why trash collection is up, but Lee said, “Intuitively, I think the COVID-19 virus is having an impact.”
Nationally, the surge in household garbage has been evident in areas hard hit by the virus and subsequent stay-at-home directives.
Since Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis issued his “Safer at Home” order on April 1, a trash hauler that operates in Port St. Lucie County reported spikes in volume as high as 30% — “as residents fill their idle time cleaning their homes and garages and throwing away old and broken items,” The Stuart
News reported April 23.
An escalation in illegal dumping has been reported in some areas. On April 16, officials at Cape Cod National Seashore said household and commercial waste were dumped in the federally protected area. Restrictions imposed at nearby transfer stations because of the pandemic may have prompted the dumping, according to news reports.
Will Healey, a spokesman for Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, said there has been no significant increase in illegal dumping in state parks and forests.
Bruns, the West Hartford recycling coordinator, noted that municipalities across the nation have suspended some waste management services during the pandemic due in large part to concerns about workers’ health. The town of Windham posted notice recently that curbside bulky waste collection has been canceled this year due to COVID-19 and that property owners may be fined for violations.
“There’s uncertainty about how long the virus can live on surfaces,” the Chronicle newspaper quoted Public Works Director Scott Clairmont as saying. “The safety of the staff that does the collection was the main consideration.”
“This is an important point for people to understand,” Bruns said. “Waste and recycling workers really are essential workers.”
Courant staff writers Emily Brindley and Don Stacom contributed to this story.
Jesse Leavenworth can be reached at jleavenworth@courant .com.